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Valentine heard the bark of Ford and Chevy's .50s and watched Javelin go forward, Bears in the lead, the dirt and dust of the artillery falling on them like snow as three hard-fighting wedges pierced the militia positions.
He felt for the Quislings. Indiana stockholders who wanted more land for their herds, men who wanted to own a trucking company, boys told by their Church officiates that militia service was the path to security for their parents and siblings, a good mark for the family record. Rousted out of their beds, told to put on uniforms they wore six weeks a year, picking up unwieldy bolt-action rifles fit more for intimidating a mob than turning back Gamecock's raging Bears.
The odds and ends of the Kentucky Alliance urged their mobile fortifications into action.
Just the sight of charging worms might be enough to send most of the Quislings running: They resembled a yellow avalanche moving uncannily uphill.
Valentine saw Tikka in their midst, expertly hanging off the side of her mount and using her saddle as a rifle rest. Their affair still sparked and sputtered along, though they were both too dirty, tired, and hungry to do much but quickly rut and depart like wary rabbits in fox country. Valentine wasn't sure he could even put a name to what they had, but it was something as natural as the fall Kentucky rain, and just as cleansing.
He thought of the artistic swell of her buttocks. Mad thought, with shells and bullets Hying in at least three directions.
Bloom's command car bounced forward.
The Moondagger batteries joined the fray, but only a few shells fell, still heavies, hard to adjust to meet a fast-moving attack. Hope-fully the tubes would be in the brigade's hands within a few hours. In the hands of trained spotters, they'd be handy against river traffic, especially if they had some white phosphorous shells that could be set to air burst.
The first reports began to come back to headquarters. The militia had simply dissolved into little groups of men lying on their faces, spread-eagle in surrender. There were reports of the Moondaggers doing as much damage to the Quisling militia as Javelin. The Wolves were finding trails blocked with bodies, shot by their alleged allies as they retreated.
It was Glass' kind of operation. No heroism required.
Valentine looked around the forward command post.
"That's a nice-looking province there," he said, pointing to some ground occupied by his company where they had a good view of the Moondagger postions. "Let's move forward.
Signals, get ready to lay a new line. We're shifting operations forward."
He found Rand looking a little frazzled. "How's your first battle going?"
"It's a little more exciting than I'd like, sir," Rand said.
A wailing cry broke out from a shallow between the small hill of the observation post and the beginnings of Kentucky's rollers in the distance. A wave of Moondaggers poured up in a counterattack from the center. The phrase "gleam of bayonets" crossed Valentine's mental transom. The warrior poets were right-it is an unsettling sight when they're pointed at you.
Glass' machine guns cut into them but the Moondaggers ignored their losses, firing back wildly. They fell onto the outer edges of his platoon, fighting with curved dagger and rifle butt as grenades killed friend and foe alike. Bee was suddenly beside him, emptying her shotguns to deadly effect.
Then they were at the edge of the command post. Bee grabbed two bayoneted rifles thrust at her-Valentine heard her grunt as she seized the hot barrels-and poked the bearded men back, knocking them down like an angry mother snatching up dangerous toys. She reversed one rifle to have the long bayonet ready and used the other as a club to knock Moondaggers off their feet, sticking them like beetles on Styrofoam.
Rand fell without a cry, a bullet not caring that it cavitated one of the best brains Valentine had ever met.
Valentine, grenades bracketing him and vaguely bothered by the stickiness of Rand's blood on his face, did his best to cover Bee and Glass' gunners with his submachine gun. He reloaded, and only after emptying the gun again did he notice that he'd just wasted a full magazine of Quick wood bullets. Stupid!
Then a company of Guard engineers came forward, firing their light carbines, and it was over. Wounded Moondaggers, still lashing at their enemies with their knives, were shot and shot again until they quit crawling.
Bee poked at a loose flap of skin ragged from a bullet hole in her thigh like a child investigating a tick.
Valentine told Bee to put Rand in the shade of a beat-up medical pickup and get her wounds looked at, had Patel pull the company back together and see about ammunition supply, and then sent a bare report of the repulsed counterattack back to Bloom.
Javelin Headquarters was on the move to the old Moondagger positions.
"Sir, radio report coming in from the Wolves!" Preville relayed. "The Moondaggers are running. Running! They're quitting and running hard up the highway to Bowling Green. Their legworm supports are going with them."
A lieutenant checked their large-scale map. "They keep heading down that highway, and they'll be getting into Mammoth country."
"Wonder what the Mammoth thought about the little catechism from those men the
'Daggers sliced up," Valentine said. "I wouldn't want to have my truck break down there."
"Wouldn't surprise me if they built a wooden cage or two," Patel said. "It's the end for them."
"Not the end," Valentine said. "Not even the beginning of the end." As Churchill might have put it, it was just the end of the beginning.
